Apple’s Homepod to be soon in Markeet

Apple officially unveiled HomePod, its first and new home smart speaker, on the first day of the 2017 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which took place on June 5-9, at San Jose, California. HomePod will be Amazon’s Echo competitor as it is a replica and significant improvement of the technology employed in Amazon Echo. Amazon’s (AMZN, Tech30) and Google’s (GOOGL, Tech30) have been the main smart speakers in the market up until now. The new home speaker is expected to be a delight just like most Apple products, which are often characterized by class and new advanced or calculated tech. The new home speaker that is expected to go on sale later on in the year in U.S, Australia and U.K and next year in other parts of the world will cost the consumer $349. Its price tag is way beyond that of Amazon’ full-sized Echo that retails at $180 and that of Google’s Home $129.

Home-pod will be a 7-inch tall speaker covered with black or white mesh resembling the top of a microphone. It will have seven tweeters, six microphones and an A8 chip similar to the iPhone’s on it inside. HomePod includes Siri voice integration, and it is expected to serve as a Home-Assistant. It has spatial awareness. Thus, it can detect its location in a room and make necessary sound adjustments. Its microphones are set to listen for a trigger phrase like the Amazon Echo to perform its functions. HomePod is expected to have an improved sound technology that surpasses that of the Amazon Echo and interactive voice assistants using the Siri Voice integration. The communications on the device are encrypted according to Apple.

Apple (AAPL, Tech30) frames the HomePod, as a product whose focus is mainly on music. However, other than playing music from Apple Music, the device can also help control other home appliances, check the news and traffic, perform unit conversions, schedule reminders, send messages, translate and answer trivia questions as well as set timers.